Blog of author Sarah Deming

January 22, 2017

I put a Moleskine in the pocket of my coat but didn't take notes on the march. Let the youngsters do the heavy lifting. The Lower East Side Girls Club had serious podcasting and banner-making chops.

Photos by Sue Jaye Johnson

We rolled out of Manhattan on a chartered bus at 6 AM, fortified with fresh-squeezed juices, mini-muffins, and pumpkin loaves. Because the revolution serves good food and happiness is the best revenge.

The girls made people happy. They wore glitter on their cheeks and I Know My Rights tee-shirts à la Colin Kaepernick. Some interviewed marchers about their histories and beliefs, while others leaned over the barriers, boosting the crowd. When Aisha yelled through the megaphone about justice being built on the backbones of girls, everybody cheered.

Due to the historic turnout, we were bottlenecked and unable to hear the speakers or music. This was a little bit of a bummer but also a reminder of the limited nature of any one person's view.

As Sue said, "Sometimes just getting to the gig is the gig."

I saw kids from Bucknell College, Jewish and LGBT groups, a Pacific Islanders drum corps, Texans and Floridians and lots of other New Yorkers, goofballs in Harry Potter outfits proclaiming Trump a Slytherin, women dressed like suffragettes, and a weatherbeaten white couple with a sign that read "We Marched in Selma." At one point, Arielle and Jai materialized like two Venuses.

Back when I was a broke boxer, I lived in their brownstone, tutoring Arielle in French and math. Now she's all grown up and making her own movies.

I reflected on all the women who have supported me throughout my life, offering shelter, sandwiches, inspiration.

Look who else we saw! Tiara Brown, former world amateur champion, in full superhero mode. While we chatted and took selfies, Officer Brown helped a half dozen people, at one point even allowing a woman who had lost her car to get some cell phone juice from the cop van. The streets are safer with strong, community-minded police like Tiara out there. Plus she looks fierce in that uniform. Beauty is also a form of revenge.

On the bus home, the girls were jubilant over Colin Kaepernick's Instagram repost of their picture. He wrote: "It's beautiful to see powerful young women fighting systemic oppression! They are our future!" The post has over 40,000 likes, but it also has a comment thread that is truly astounding in its bile.

I don't know if the Internet has made people more vicious, but certainly it degrades discourse. And certainly it allowed Trump to rise.

Both sides are guilty of this. We lob one-liners at each other like molotov cocktails, hoping to shame the opposition into silence. But people do not learn when they are ashamed; people learn when they are calm. And you can't attack directly; you need to take them by surprise. Women are good at that.

June 21, 2015

I started this blog eight years ago, and one of my first posts was a little prose poem about my fatherless childhood. A few weeks later, my dad called to wish me a happy birthday.

I picked up, even though I wasn't drunk. My parents divorced when I was two, and conversations with Dad were something I endured every year or so, like going to the gynecologist. The trick was to talk constantly so as to avoid awkward silences, while also steering clear of any topic that made me feel vulnerable, such as politics, feminism, race in America, my writing, my mother, or my hopes and dreams. It helped to be drunk.

Dad was retiring soon from the Oklahoma City urban planning department, and I asked about his plans. My stepmother’s parents had just died, leaving a hundred head of cattle orphaned on their ranch. Donna was trying to convince Dad to take the reins.

“But what I really want,” he said, his voice sheepish, “is to buy a big old RV and take Donna on the road. Just be a bum for a while.”

This made me unaccountably sad. Somehow I just knew it would never happen.

I could hear my husband lurking in the bedroom, pretending not to listen. Ethan was protective when it came to my complex parental relationships. He always took my side, even when I was wrong. This was one of his best qualities.

“I read your blog,” my father said.

My heartbeat accelerated as I tried to recall the last thing I’d posted.

“About when you and Danny were little.”

Oh God.The piece about our fatherless childhood.

It had never occurred to me my father might read that. I began apologizing, but he cut me off.

“I am so sorry I wasn’t there for you when you were growing up,” he said.

The words had the weighty feeling of something rehearsed. It made me intensely uncomfortable. My husband materialized by my side, placing one of his soft pianist’s hands on my shoulder.

“It’s alright, Dad,” I said. “Everything turned out okay.”

Mom had told me many times that she left my father for my sake – “It was okay to treat me like a piece of shit, but I wouldn’t let him do that to you” – and for all her apocryphal accounts, I believed this one.

“I felt sorry when I read your blog,” Dad drawled. “But that was just my first reaction. I read it again, and I thought...that’s a damn fine piece of writing.”

I was stunned. My father had criticized every piece of my work he had ever seen, dating back to the spice rack I made for him in fifth grade shop class. I think I dissociated a little.

When I got off the phone, my husband had tears in his eyes.

“Your father finally gave it up to you,” he said.

Ethan’s own parents had never acknowledged his musical talent. His father was a painter who drank himself to death when Ethan was nineteen. We had several of his canvasses in our apartment: portraits of classic cars whose surfaces reflected faces, farmhouses, Wisconsin cornfields. Ethan’s mother and her boyfriend lived in Minnesota, where they cared for a younger brother with fetal alcohol syndrome. They were kind people yet permanently diminished by life’s disappointments; both would be dead within the year.

My marriage, as a consequence, maintained a foreign policy of splendid isolation. Ethan and I saw our birth families as a necessary yet painful part of our origin story, like the radioactive spider that bit Peter Parker. They gave us the wounds that made us interesting, but one bite was enough; we didn’t go back to the spiders’ for Passover.

A few years ago my father had come to stay with us in Brooklyn after one of his city planning conferences. The first thing he did was plug his iPod into our stereo and play his own music, an action my husband later described as “the most emasculating thing you can do to a jazz musician in his own home.” Dad was just trying to impress Ethan, but it was a misstep, as usual. The trip was full of them.

The “Slow Flow” yoga class we attended together was not meant as revenge. I thought it would be a relaxing exercise experience, but the founders of the Laughing Lotus Yoga Center obviously had in mind some strange usage of the word “slow” that I wasn’t previously aware of. Jasmine, a hypomanic brunette with no body fat, opened class with a ten-minute monologue about redecorating her altar. Dad’s two years of gentle yoga at the Oklahoma City YMCA had not prepared him for an ordeal on this scale.

My own yoga training had begun at the Kripalu Center in the Berkshire Mountains. In a Kripalu class, emotionally damaged people of all shapes and sizes rolled around on the carpet, weeping. I’d never quite adjusted to the cool-kids yoga of New York, which centered around a push-up-type movement called a “vinyasa” performed in $200 pants.

Dad’s problems were worse. Like most heavy people, he had trouble stepping forward from downward dog into the lunge because his belly got in the way. We had side-by-side mats, so I had an excellent view of his hernial efforts as he struggled to keep up with the blaring trance music. I telepathically begged Jasmine for help, but she was busy adjusting the sacrums of the more attractive students. She ignored my father’s labored breathing the way Martha Stewart might ignore a farting dinner guest. After a while, Dad grew fatigued and toppled over.

“This class is too advanced for you,” Jasmine hissed. “Please leave.”

Dad stumbled to his feet, blushing, and we rolled up our mats in silence. I felt like a horrible person. He had started taking yoga to connect with me, and here I was, setting him up to be humiliated. He and I were always out of sync, always trying to make up for time that was long gone.

After this visit, my husband said, “I have this feeling you should call your dad more. He’s not going to be around forever.”

I should have listened. My father took a bad fall off the porch steps of Donna’s family ranch, tearing the quadriceps tendons in both knees. His doctor recommended surgery to repair them. Double knee surgery on an inactive, overweight man seemed like a bad idea to me, but I didn’t get involved. I told Dad I would meditate and chant for him while he was under.

As I was leaving to teach yoga one day, my cell rang.

Dad was all alone in the recovery room, his voice groggy from anesthesia. The surgery was over. Not only had I not chanted or meditated, I hadn’t even thought of him at all. I stood on my stoop, blinking in the sun and trying to think of something to say. I was late for class and felt embarrassed, so I cut him short and got off the phone.

Two weeks later I thought about calling, but I decided to have a drink first. By the time I got drunk, I forgot.

The next weekend I was with Ethan in a hotel room in Philadelphia. My cell rang, showing an Oklahoma area code. It was a police officer, who said my father had died. I could hear my stepmother crying in the background.

I copied the words “pulmonary embolism” on a sheet of hotel stationery, my heart leaden with guilt. I tried to remember our last phone call.

Had I even said “I love you”?

I couldn’t remember.

I flew to Oklahoma, where two Presbyterian ministers – one fat and one skinny – were presiding over my father’s funeral. The fat minister was from the big church in Oklahoma City whose patrician congregation had made my father uncomfortable. He was pale and sweaty and looked on the verge of death himself.

“How would you describe Mike’s political views?” he asked us at the pre-funeral meeting.

We all remained silent, my stepmother because her mind was frozen with grief, her sister Janet because she was deferring to us, and me because I did not want to speak ill of the dead.

“Well,” drawled the fat minister, “would you say Mike was on the side of the little guy or of big government?”

The leading nature of the question enraged me.

“He would have said he was for the little guy,” I answered, “but he voted Republican.”

The fat minister regarded me with naked loathing. At the end of the visit, he turned to face Donna and Janet and said, “You’re such simple, unpretentious people. I know how much Mike valued that.”

The skinny minister received us in his small rural church in Ardmore, Oklahoma. He was upbeat, sales-oriented, and so white that he’d had the top of his head burned off to combat skin cancer. He told a fun story about how hard it had been not to cry at the last funeral he’d worked.

“One thing I’ve learned is that it’s always best to avoid unpleasant surprises!” said the skinny minister. “Any guests who might be a source of conflict?”

Donna looked at me.

“Mom isn’t coming,” I said.

“Well...now...Sarah, maybe she wants to come.”

I got that icky feeling that preceded our passive-aggressive negotiations about where to eat lunch. My stepmother never revealed what she wanted until I had chosen the other option.

“It didn’t occur to me to invite her,” I admitted.

Were exes supposed to come to a funeral? I certainly didn’t want her there. It was enough chaos dealing with my grief-addled stepmom, oversexed Granny with the early-stage Alzheimer’s, and Uncle Dave, who was writing a book on psychic Jesus.

“Isn’t it wonderful that we’re having this conversation now?” said the skinny minister. “No surprises!”

He told a story about a wedding he’d worked where the bride had entrusted his ministerial fee to her trashy, drug-addicted mother. The mom absconded with the cash, but he’d never told the couple because he didn’t want to ruin their special day.

“Why don’t you call your mother and invite her,” Donna said.

I detected in her voice a touch of martyrdom.

Back at the ranch, I called Mom and told her Donna said she was welcome to come but that everyone would understand why she couldn’t. I suggested a nice flower arrangement might be appropriate.

“Great!” Mom cried. “I’ll fly out with Dan!”

She was euphoric, viewing Dad’s funeral as an exciting vacation and chance to reconnect with old friends and enemies. I tried to dissuade her, but it was futile. When I told Donna my mother was coming, she burst into tears.

I ironed the shirt my father wore. No one ever taught me to iron, so I went very slowly. It was thick blue cotton from Brook’s Brothers, and it looked good with his favorite tie, the one with the painted pear.

I wore a black velvet dress that I’d bought under peer pressure while shopping with a socialite. For some reason I had never returned it. It felt good to have something rich to put on for Dad.

I forced myself to approach the corpse, arrayed beneath an explosion of carnations. It looked something like my father. The rouged cheeks and painted lips were wrong, but the thick silver hair was handsome as ever. I touched the chest. Even through the jacket, shirt, and undershirt it was hard as stone.

At the service I read a list of sixty-two things I loved about my dad, one for every year of his life. As usual, I put in a dumb joke – #52: He had a cute accent, even though he thought I was the one with the accent – but the line that really had them rolling in the aisles was #42: He was coming around to the idea of being a rancher.

I hadn’t meant that to be funny. The funeral was in rural Ardmore, and I think it was Dad’s city slicker colleagues who were laughing. It was loud laughter, and I sensed beneath it an undercurrent of viciousness. I paused for a moment, feeling suddenly helpless. There were so many things about my father’s world that I would never understand.

When I returned a few weeks later to help Donna clean the house, I asked for the wireless password to check my email. She called out a string of digits.

My fingers froze. “That’s my birthday.”

“Your birthday was his password for everything,” she said.

It’s hard to explain why this detail should be what made me grieve. Maybe it’s because my father was a detail man. When I do math, I feel his mind in mine. Even in death he was orderly: all the bills filed away, written in his beautiful draftsman’s hand.

I cried then, and I am crying again now, thinking of my big, silent father typing my birthday into ATMs and voice mail systems, day after day. Meanwhile, weeks went by when he never even crossed my mind.

It was like getting to the end of a sad whodunit. All the clues: how my father used to say the happiest night of his life was a dinner spent with me and my brother; the countless strangers at the funeral who told me how proud he was of me; the dry-erase board at his office where I’d written “Hi Dad” when I was twelve, which he’d never let anyone clean, after all these years.

“Your parents are the people who always have to take you in,” my husband said. “When they’re dead, you have nowhere to go.”

Dad would have taken me in, but I had never asked. It became a point of pride never to ask him for anything. It hit me so hard. My father loved me. He had always loved me, and I never knew.

June 18, 2015

Just back from Vegas, where I covered the Burlesque Hall of Fame weekend for Penthouse Forum. Here I am with my dear friend Peekaboo (in the see-through dress and pasties) and her crew of starlets and dandies. Peekaboo competed for Miss Exotic World the same day American Pharaoh won the triple crown. Although the title went to Trixie Little, Peeks danced her ass off and is the queen of my heart.

Photo: Debi Cornwall

My favorite kid from our gym just made his pro debut. Now I'm taking an extended break from boxing while I try to get this novel into shape.

Ethan got me a llama in Australia to keep me company on my homeless tour. Our place is still being patched up post-fire, but I've lined up some luxurious squats thanks to very generous friends. Lllama and I are currently residing in Bellport, where the sea air is fine.

April 22, 2015

Debi warned me not to bring just any shoes to her shoemaker, as he has been known to deny service to footwear he considers gauche. I waited until I had two pairs of vintage heels from Ethan's 90-year-old piano teacher Sophia.

The heels had been given to Sophia by her friend Sita Devi, the Maharani of Baroda, a mysterious Indian noblewoman who used to cavort with the Paris jet set. The Maharani gave Sophia a lot of gifts, including a collection of 107 saris.

The shoemaker was a beetle-browed Russian who operated out of a storefront on Montague Street next to Connecticut Muffin. He examined the pumps silently. One pair was gold with a rhinestone teardrop over the toe; the other was lavender silk. They were so old that the bottoms of the heels had crumbled away.

"Nice shoes," he said at last.

I swelled with pride. "They belonged to a princess."

"I know," he said.

After he fixed them I wore them a few times. They made me think of the Little Mermaid. Not the Disney version, the Andersen original, where the witch tells the little mermaid, "you will feel great pain, as if a sword were passing through you. But all who see you will say that you are the prettiest little human being they ever saw."

After that, I went back to my local guy, an Italian man who never judged me for buying cheap shoes that needed to be resoled constantly because I walk weird. But then one day his store was closed down, and I heard from the neighbors that something awful had happened to him. And I had one pair of boots - gray suede with stacked heels that I bought in Genoa with my mom - that had proven beyond the Italian's power to mend. So today I returned to Debi's guy with three pairs of shoes that had survived our apartment fire.

Things were subtly changed. The Connecticut Muffin was now defunct. There was a row of old shoes for sale next to the register. The Russian greeted me eagerly and showed not the slightest scorn for the pair of Chinese Laundry peep-toe booties that I had bought at TJ Maxx with Cousin Nikki for $30, ten dollars cheaper than what he now demanded for resoling.

Although that seemed outlandish, the shoes were surprisingly versatile. I'd worn the stilettos down to the metal core, creating a terrible sensation when I walked on pavement, like the shoe equivalent of tinfoil on fillings.

"I don't know if you can even fix these," I said, demonstrating the loose heel on the gray boots that the Italian had only worsened. The Russian disappeared into the back with them, then returned a moment later.

"I can fix," he said.

He turned my baby blue Donald Pliner cowboy boots over in his hands. They didn't even really need new soles, I realized. I had brought them in to elevate the collection.

"These are well made," he said.

"Yeah."

My stepmom had bought them for me in Houston after we'd buried my dad. I thought about telling the Russian that, but I was afraid he'd say, "I know."

He added up some figures in his head and announced the repairs would cost $165.

This was a staggering figure, but we lost so much in the fire that I've taken a sort of nihilistic attitude to financial transactions. I let a car service driver charge me $20 for a ride today that should have cost $8, and the other day I bought a $30 pair of panties.

"You pay full amount in cash now," said the Russian.

I only had $75, so he told me to come back with the rest tomorrow. I told him I wasn't sure I'd have time.

"Come soon. Bring cash. Rent is expensive here."

He pointed sadly to the row of old shoes for sale and told me they had been left behind by former customers.

I asked his name, and he said it was Vitaly.

"Like Vitaly Klitschko," I said.

"No!" he cried.

He launched into a long diatribe about Vitaly's venal approach to Ukrainian politics. I'm seeing Wladimir fight this Saturday at the Garden, before any of the shoes will be ready. I should have taken notes.

March 10, 2015

My husband really gets into it about jazz drumming and race over at Do the Math.

Tonight he plays in the solo piano showcase at the Village Vanguard, part of an exciting week of programming coordinated by Jason Moran to celebrate the 80th anniversary of that hallowed dive. I used to be scared to go to the Vanguard because the owner was so mean. Now it's my favorite place to hear music. I guess it wouldn't be a treasure if it didn't have a dragon.

Thanks to everyone for your support about the fire. Still no progress on our place, and we've got crash pads lined up through April.

When I walk in the door of the boxing gym, I always feel better. I never know what kind of questions the young people will ask me. I've got a poetry student, a meditation buddy, an aspiring essayist, a kid slogging through pre-calculus, and yesterday Donovan brought in some linear equations. Meanwhile, our elite fighters continue to kick ass in the Golden Gloves. Last night Chiquito made it to the finals at the Barclays Center. Shu Shu is in, too. Tonight Africa, Big Black, and Omar fight.

As Ray Arcel told Thomas Hauser, "The important part of boxing is not that youngsters realize their dreams, but that they can dream. Every day in the gym they're somebody special. They're a fighter."

March 03, 2015

If I've been cranky lately, it's because we're still living out of suitcases. After piling all our belongings in heaps in garbage bags and demolishing the ceilings, the workmen have now taken a mysterious six week break. Some kind of delaying tactic by the insurance companies. There is no end in sight, and, as tenants, we have no say.

My initial burst of smugness about being a bohemian who does not care about material possessions has faded and now I just want to go home, put on a pretty dress, and drink coffee out of the mugs I bought in London that look like Penguin paperbacks. We should have put our stuff in storage right away, because by now most of our furniture is ruined.

The workmen stacked the toilet plunger on top of my boxing gloves – who does that? – and I'm pretty sure they took some of my author's copies of Penthouse Forum. I don't know where the medicine cabinet is, which sucks because I still had one Percocet left from my kidney donation and I want it. Everything smells like a burning tire.

I started taking Spanish to make myself feel better by leaning new things. When I told that to one of my boxers, he told me that when he was homeless and living in a shelter, he used the time to get his GED. This made me feel worse, because how can I complain when so many wonderful friends have opened their homes to us?

January 25, 2015

It started in our upstairs neighbors' place, probably due to some old wiring. When the firemen finally let us back in, the back half of our apartment was pretty much destroyed. It coulda been much worse. Our bedroom furniture was all crappy anyway.

Everyone has been incredibly kind, and my dear friend Lisa gave us her apartment for the week. Soft landing!

One thing that kept me in good spirits was following the action at the USA Boxing Nationals, where many of my favorite fighters claimed titles, including Atlas Cops and Kids' tiny lion Christopher Colbert. I was also happy to see Mikaela Mayer take the lightweight slot. With Queen Underwood and Rashida Ellis moving up in weight, the road to Rio looks wide open for this beautiful boxer.

Speaking of the open road, what better time for a vacation than while our ceilings are being demolished? Thursday I head to Cartagena, Columbia to visit my spiritual big sister, Raquel Ruiz, she of the redoubtable research skills and four-inch heels. Viva!

January 20, 2015

All press is good press, and so I was happy to see the Atlantic paying attention to my grimy, girly corner of the sporting world. Kate Jenkins's sympathetic piece looks at the pressure on women fighters to market themselves as sex symbols, yet there is an odd way in which the piece is itself evidence of the problem it decries. If we want people to take our sport seriously, we need to get the details right. Here's a list of the errors I saw, beginning with the two most obvious, the rankings.

"Tori Nelson, ranked #1 in the US and #2 in the world"

WBAN has Nelson #2 in the US and #4 in the world; Boxrec has her #1 in the US and #3 in the world

On Tyreishia Douglas: "Currently, she’s the #1 ranked female bantamweight in the world"

Douglas is a flyweight not a bantamweight. WBAN does not rank her, and Boxrec has her at #18 in the world.

The rest of these points are debatable, but I still see them as inaccurate:

"She estimated that the winnings for equivalent male fighters start off between $20,000 and $30,000."

Tori is a 13-0 welterweight. It's hard to find "equivalent male fighters," because at 13-0 most male welterweights won't yet be fighting for titles, but this figure seems too high as a starting point. Local promoter Felipe Gomez of New Legends Boxing estimates that a man with that record could pull $4,000 for an 8-rounder on the cheap end, $6,000-$12,000 if TV is involved. Al Haymon guys, Olympians would be pulling much more.

"Then she added, referring to the men, “Maybe I gotta fight them to make that.” I don’t doubt she’d do it. Nelson, like nearly all female boxers, began training by sparring almost exclusively with men. There are still so few women in the sport that the training gyms pair men and women out of necessity."

Boxing is one of the most strength-intensive sports. Pee wee boxers might spar members of the opposite sex but competitive adult women are generally paired with men for technical sparring only. When elite women are paired with men for open sparring, there will be a weight advantage accorded the woman. Women don't need to be able to beat men to be serious athletes.

"The trainers, in turn, know what the promoters are looking for and are likely to select their fighters with that knowledge in mind...Because of a perceived lack of interest in women’s boxing, trainers, managers, promoters, and sponsors are all reluctant to work with women."

True of the business-side people, not of the trainers. All the trainers I know (including myself) love training women. Most trainers these days make their money off white collar clients anyway, and women are good for business. I called Gleason's Gym, where pro Kiesher "Fire" McLeod-Wells told me they have approximately 80 trainers, nearly all of whom have female clients. Church Street Gym reported eight trainers on staff, plus independent contractors, none of whom discriminate against women.

On Douglas's loss to Esparza at the 2012 Olympic Trials: "White believes Douglas is a stronger fighter than Esparza, but she told me Douglas’s managers couldn’t raise enough money to make her an appealing candidate. (In cases like Douglas’s where there is no knockout, the winner is determined based on the judges' assessment.) Many of the people I spoke with implied that for the cash-strapped Olympic team, a boxer with financial backing is an asset."

Esparza beat Douglas 32-17 in the Olympic Trials. As I reported from ringside, the lopsided score did not reflect the strength of Douglas's performance, but Esparza was still the clear victor. This decision had nothing to do with sponsorships and everything to do with Esparza's superior ring generalship and conditioning. This was a double-elimination tournament, and Douglas's first loss had come earlier to Christina Cruz of New York, a fighter who moonlighted as a waitress to make ends meet. The winners of the other two divisions, Queen Underwood and Claressa Shields, were also cash-strapped.

"The media has disarmed Esparza, reducing her from a skilled athlete to just another frivolous female celebrity."

Jenkins does to Esparza precisely what she criticizes others for. There is no mention of Esparza's recent gold at the Women's World Championships in Korea, nor is Esparza interviewed in this piece, despite being the most thoughtful and quotable of boxers. Moreover, not all media have taken the reductive approach: Sue Jaye Johnson at WNYC, independent journalist Raquel Ruiz, and Girlboxing's Malissa Smith have all written about Esparza's achievements from a pure boxing perspective.

"Even for the rare sex symbol like Esparza, it’s hard to sustain a lucky streak. Once Esparza leaves the Olympics to go pro, Nelson speculates that her sponsors will drop her."

Esparza's bone structure may be due to luck, but nothing else about her career is, and why should we believe Nelson's mildly embittered speculations about Esparza's sponsors? As Mikaela Mayer - a technically excellent and physically beautiful boxer sponsored by Dr. Pepper - once told me, it's hard work to close these deals and to maintain your performance under the added pressure of corporate patronage. Dealing with suits takes a certain decorum and reliability in short supply in boxing gyms. Why didn't Jenkins interview some of the A-siders who could have spoken from the inside about the devil's bargain of sexing up yourself to sell?

"The addition of women’s boxing to the Olympic lineup ultimately means little if the boxers still can’t expect to make a living as professional athletes afterwards."

The addition of women's boxing to the Olympic lineup means everything in the world to those of us who care about the sport. Christy Halbert, whose advocacy helped secure the Olympic inclusion, told me, "Not every woman boxer wants to turn pro. The fact that women can now be Olympic boxers has changed their lives. There are women in other countries who have money they wouldn't have if they hadn't won a medal. It can be a life-changer, not only for the boxer but for her whole family."

I was so happy watching Claressa shadowbox in the ring while the kids gathered around asking about her fights and her training. I consider this Darshan for my boxers. Claressa is the best woman in the world at what she does, perhaps the best woman boxer ever. Seeing that can change you.

It's been a rough fall. Over at our gym blog, I've posted a tribute to a young man who was shot to death in Brownsville.

I haven't been doing much writing, but I have essays coming out soon in Penthouse Forum and the Threepenny Review. Here's hoping Claressa was Darshan for me, too.